Barack Obama had, until recently, made his campaign for President of the United States a referendum on the invasion and occupation of Iraq. In the Democratic Party primaries, Obama attacked Hillary Clinton for her vote in favor of the invasion. Among Republican contenders, John McCain went out of his way to appear as the candidate most supportive of the Bush administration’s policy in Iraq.

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Mi propósito en esta charla es presentar una discusión sobre el significado de la historia para cualquier izquierda que se asuma marxista. En Platypus hacemos eje en la historia de la izquierda porque pensamos que la narrativa histórica que uno cuente no es otra cosa que una teoría del presente. Implicita o explicitamente, la concepción de la historia que se adopta constituye una toma de posición respecto de como el presente ha llegado a ser lo que es hoy. Al centrarnos en la historia de la izquierda, y al adoptar una perspectiva política cuyo eje es esta mirada izquierdista de la historia, estamos sosteniendo como hipótesis que las características determinantes de nuestro presente tal como lo conocemos son el resultado de lo que la izquierda ha hecho históricamente por acción u omisión.

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What does it mean to say, as Platypus does, that “the Left is Dead?” It represents the desire for a tabula rasa, for a start from scratch. It is the admission that there is no living tradition, no movement to join in the Marxist Left; That it has been defeated and that it has self-destructed. It means that the Maoisms and Trotskyisms that today stumble around like zombies in the form of tiny sectarian groups have either given themselves to dishonestly cheerleading for the Green and Democratic parties or simply have become antiquarian societies reciting old revolutionary pieties with the mechanical enthusiasm of Hare-Krishna monks; While at the same time the “radicals” and “anarchists” that prescribe dropping out of society by building “alternative communities” “outside of capitalism” have rationalized their powerlessness into a lifestyle that poses as politics.

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In 1969, SNCC member and Third World Women’s Alliance founder Francis Beal wrote The Black Women’s Manifesto; Double Jeopardy: To Be Black and Female. While Beal was certainly not the first woman to raise questions about the different ways differently raced women were impacted by sexist oppression, The Black Women’s Manifesto marks the birth of modern intersectional political thought.

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The election of Barack Obama will be an event. But it has proven confusing for most on the “Left,” who claim to want to overcome anti-black racism and achieve social justice. Rejection of Obama on this basis has been as significant as the embrace of his candidacy. There is as much anxiety as hope stirred by Obama, especially regarding the significance of his blackness.

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